Elections in England and Wales for the new Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) will be held on 15th November.

This new critical role will fund local victims’ services, hold the Chief Constable to account and publish a Police and Crime Plan.

End Violence Against Women, Rape Crisis England and Wales and the Women’s Resource Centre have published a leaflet to help women’s groups ensure that VAWG is a priority.

Please download the flyer here and send it out far and wide!

As part of St Mungo’s Action Week on Women’s Homelessness and to celebrate the launch of their Rebuilding Shattered Lives campaign, Homeless Link, WRC and St Mungo’s held a Spotlight on Women’s Homelessness event on the 20th June.

The event aimed to promote partnership working between women’s and homelessness organisations and to improve knowledge, skills and highlight best practice when supporting homelessness women, many of whom have complex needs.

The event was a fully booked success and featured a variety of speakers including: Shadow Equalities Minister Kate Green MP, staff from the Department for Communities and Local Government and experts from the homelessness and violence against women sectors. Attendees participated in interactive workshops on topics including: sex trafficking and the Olympics, and joint working between domestic violence and substance misuse organisations.

Over the next 18 months, St Mungo’s will be continuing this great work and exploring ways to support homeless women through its Rebuilding Shattered Lives campaign. As part of the campaign they are inviting organisations, front-line workers and especially women themselves, to talk about how best to prevent women’s homelessness and support their recovery. The objective of their campaign is to increase awareness, promote good practice and ultimately achieve policy change. 

Learn more about the Rebuilding Shattered Lives campaign and how you can get involved here.

Find out more about WRC’s future training and events here.

Navca and Voice4Change have expressed ‘alarm’ at government plans to cut £10m of grants to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), and warn that the cut will filter down to 62 local anti-discrimination groups.

The umbrella bodies joined to voice concern over what they are calling a “backwards step” taken by the government through its equalities red tape challenge and reform of the EHRC announced in the publication of the Home Office business plan.

Civil Society magazine has more …

The latest annual report on gender equality from the European Commission shows that improving equality between women and men is essential to the EU’s response to the current economic crisis.

It is said that EU countries need to get more women into the labour market if they are to meet the EU’s overall objective of 75% employment rate for all adults by 2020. One of the way’s of improving Europe’s competitiveness is to obtain better balance between women and men in economic decision-making positions. Studies have shown that gender diversity pays off and companies with higher percentages of women on corporate boards perform better than those with all-male boards.

“The economic case for getting more women into the workforce and more women into top jobs in the EU is overwhelming,” said Viviane Reding, Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship.

“We can only reach our economic and employment goals by making full use of all our human resources – both in the labour market as a whole and at the top. This is an essential part of our economic recovery plans.”

The Commission also took an important step towards the goal of ending gender-based violence by proposing a package of measures to strengthen the rights of crime victims (IP/11/585), which included a series of measures specifically aimed at helping women who fall victim to domestic violence.

You can read more on the report and accompanying documents on the EC News website.

WRC is offering a FREE training and consultation event about holding national and local government to account on women’s human rights.

Place: Taunton, Somerset County Cricket Club
Time: Monday 16th April, 10.30am
 
The training is intended for all organisations in the women’s sector that wish to learn more on how to use international and UK legislation as a lobbying tool to influence policy. Individual service users of women’s sector organisations and activists are also welcome.
 
You will learn about CEDAW and the Equality Act and how to use these to influence what local public authorities are doing.

The event is organised in partnership with South West Forum, Equality South West, Fair Play South West and South West Foundation.

Book your place via our website!

The number of active grassroots feminist organisations has doubled in the past two years, according to a research carried out by the campaign group UK Feminista.

Kat Banyard, the founder of UK Feminista and author of The Equality Illusion, says “It’s a really exciting time. We are seeing a real resurgence in feminist activism that is moving from the margins to the mainstream”.

“People are willing to put up their hand and say they are a feminist without the fear of being ridiculed. Particularly in the past 12 months, we are seeing people standing up and willing to be counted.”

Campaigners can be found in practically every area of Britain – even the Orkney Feminist Network has 40 followers on Twitter, the Guardian reports. Michael Moore, the regional organiser for UK Feminista in Northern Ireland, said sites such as Twitter and Facebook had enabled people in even the most remote parts of the UK to tap into the debate. “Now it’s as easy as sending an email to mobilise people. There’s no apologies, no minutes – people can engage and thrash out issues in an online space immediately. It’s really sped up the power to communicate.”

You can read the full feature here.

Former Tory adviser Samantha Callan and ex-Labour aide Gavin Kelly give their verdict in the Guardian on whether George Osborne is tackling inequality or has inadvertently revealed how far he has yet to go.

‘The gender pay gap persists and has a major impact on living standards. However, over the past 20 years or so, far more of the growth in the household income of low- to middle-income families has come from women’s employment than men’s. Recently, that long-term rise in female participation has faltered. And if we compare the UK’s record to the best performers in Europe, it suggests that a million women are missing from our jobs market. Closing that gap over the next 10 years represents a rare opportunity to spread prosperity.’

Read the full feature here.

The Fawcett Society has today published a new briefing which brings together all the available evidence on the impact of cuts on women.

Ahead of the Coalition Government’s third budget, ‘The Impact of Austerity on Women’ considers the many different policies being pursued by the government in the name of reducing the deficit, and reveals the true impact of such measures on women - and finds that austerity is ‘reversing equality’: http://fawcettsociety.org.uk/index.asp?PageID=1267

There was a good and feisty turnout for this event, which was part of a piece of research that the WRC and Voice4Change England have been commissioned to do by the Office for Civil Society (OCS). This research will provide advice to Government on: the challenges that inequalities present to the Big Society agenda and how to address them; and the opportunities for tackling inequalities that the Big Society agenda offers.

The event was a chance to join together as equalities focused organisations to talk about how we, as a sector, can work in partnership to influence and engage with these programmes so that they benefit the vulnerable and marginalised groups that we all support.

Sheila Battersby, Policy Manager for the Local Intelligence Team at the OCS spoke first and gave an overview of Big Society policies and programmes. This was followed by presentations about 3 particular Big Society programmes. First up was Ian Beason, Programmes Manager at the Community Development Foundation, who was talking about the Community First Fund, then it was Victoria Westhorp  from the OCS and Martha Earley who were talking about Local Integrated Services and how this is working in Kingston. Lastly was Laurence Walker from Locality who was talking about Community Organisers.

 There was plenty of opportunity for questions and discussions about the programmes (and the Big Society more generally) and the implications for equalities organisations. While the aim of the event was to come up with solutions and recommendations for overcoming the barriers to engagement with the Big Society, there was undoubtedly a lot of frustration and scepticism in the room that needed to be aired first– especially when it became clear that the Community First Panels and Fund would have no equalities monitoring, and the Community Organisers scheme was perceived to be untenable financially for many voluntary organisations that are expected to host them.

 While the broader context of the cuts and the anxiety this was causing for the future of the sector was the spectre haunting all of the discussions, the resourcefulness of the organisations still shone through. Ideas for follow up actions included: linking up with and supporting unions and other organisations that have a solid anti-cuts evidence base; taking the issue of the cuts and the impact on smaller/equalities organisation to Government, perhaps with a formal Enquiry; harnessing the strength of the Equality Act to hold public bodies to account; recommending that the government create a Big Society action plan (like LGBT action plan) but which focuses on promoting equality; extend the timelines for the Transforming Infrastructure Fund;  and starting a campaign to encourage philanthropy for the equalities sector.

WRC will be using the recommendations from participants to inform their report to Government, as well as discussing how we can take forward some of the sector wide issues. We’ll keep you posted on any developments!